Distributed computer networks, to which this invention applies, are systems comprising a number of components such as printers, computers, routers and the like, that are interconnected to enable communication among the components and sharing of data and resources. For example, a distributed computer network may include a combination of separate local area networks (LAN) that are connected in a wide area network (WAN) to form a single distributed network structure. The LANs are interconnected to communicate with each other by routers. Each LAN may include servers and clients that are connected by physical media such as cables and network cards in order to share resources such as files or applications. A server may be a computer or process that provides shared network resources to network users and a client is usually a computer that accesses the shared network resources provided by the servers. Shared resources in a network may include printers, other peripherals and software applications.
Network activity information relating to messages transmitted over the network is commonly stored in designated network information files on one or more of the network's computers. As activity information is received from the various network components, it is appended to these files. Records in the files are time stamped to indicate when they were received. The information files thus maintain a record of all activities over the network over some period of time.
In order to view the network activity for a particular computer or group of computers, facilities are commonly provided to retrieve selected data for examination by the user. Such data may include, for example, the amount of traffic into or out of a particular resource in the system; a record of particular kinds of traffic; the identity of traffic originators, etc. Typically, the data is presented in tabular form, and the amount of data can be overwhelming. Thus, it is often difficult to assimilate the data presented. In order to facilitate assimilation of the data, the amount of data may be selectively reduced in volume, but this correspondingly diminishes the information that can be gleaned from it. Most often, such a reduction involves selecting a subset of the data based on the source and/or destination of the data. While such views are interesting in and of themselves, they fail to present a comprehensive, gestalt view of the network